Section: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (USA)

(JTA) — Hundreds of Jewish families are staying in the flashpoint eastern Ukraine cities of Donetsk and Mariupol and will spend Rosh Hashanah there. The families are hoping for an extended calm after the signing of a cease-fire agreement reached last week between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militias, said the chief rabbi of Donetsk, Pichas...

(JTA) — A Ukrainian Jewish man and his guard were killed during an armed attack in Donetsk, a local Jewish group said. George (Eliyahu) Zilberbord, 47, was shot dead on Aug. 30 by men who raided the area around his home on the outskirts of the embattled city, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting with Ukrainian government troops, the Vaad...

(JTA) — A Ukrainian supreme court forbade the Municipality of Lviv from going ahead with controversial plans for commemorating Jewish heritage sites. The Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine issued its ruling Wednesday against the city’s plans to design and build projects that would commemorate three Jewish sites instead of restoring them. In...

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, meeting with Jews who fled eastern Ukraine, July 2014. (Olivier Fitoussi) For ‘hardcore’ Jews displaced by Ukrainian fighting, Israel beckons By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — Each time he dispatches a car into Lugansk, Rabbi Shalom Gopin readies...

(JTA) — At least 150 Jews who fled fighting in eastern Ukraine are expected to land in Israel next month in one of the largest group of arrivals of its kind this year. Many of the would-be immigrants, who will arrive aboard three flights chartered by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, are staying at a Jewish summer camp in...

(JTA) — The Spanish government “provisionally suspended” arms sales to Israel over its operation in Gaza. The country’s Interministerial Regulatory Board on Foreign Trade and Defense made the decision last week in Madrid, the Spanish daily El Pais reported Monday. Spanish arms sales to Israel are limited, and were more...

(JTA) — A Moroccan man who killed a Jewish physician in Ukraine was sentenced to 15 years in jail after a court of appeals reversed his acquittal. Shakeeb Otman from Casablanca was sent to jail on July 22 for the premeditated murder of Leon Fraierfeld, an orthopedic surgeon from the city of Lviv in western Ukraine on Oct. 19, 2012. The July...

Ithamar Avnon, the sole Israeli national aboard the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, pictured in Jerusalem in 2008. (Shai Penn Eisenman) AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A few hours before he departed Amsterdam for Australia on July 17, Ithamar Avnon was praying for peace with his parents at their home in the Netherlands. That evening, pro-Russian...

(JTA) – Pope Francis made an impassioned appeal for peace in the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. Addressing thousands of people Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, he noted that Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. “As we remember this tragic event, I hope that the mistakes of the past won’t be...

(JTA) — Volodymyr Groysman, a deputy prime minister who is Jewish, was appointed acting prime minister of Ukraine following the resignation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Groysman was tapped at a special Cabinet meeting on Thursday, according to the RIA Novosti news site. He joined the government in February as deputy prime minister for regional...